CHAPTER II.

SHELLEY'S FIRST LOVE: OXFORD: EXPULSION.

IN 1809, Shelley left Eton and returned home; and, being now of an age when it is not uncommon for people to have some touch of romance in them—a tendency which in him was developed to an unusual degree-his delight was to steal from the house, and to wander about by moonlight. His sister remarks that "the prosaic minds of ordinary mortals could not understand the pleasure to be derived from contemplating the stars, when he, probably, was repeating to himself lines which were soon to astonish those who looked upon him as a boy. The old servant of the family would follow him, and say that Master Bysshe only took a walk, and came back again."" But (as in Mrs. Barbauld's excellent story of Eyes and no Eyes) the walk of one individual along a given road may be as different from that of another along the same path as a plenum is different from a vacuum. While the old servant, probably, saw little but the dust, and the monotonous hedges, and the figure of his young master walking on before, the undeveloped poet saw the infinite beauty of Nature spreading out in all its vastness and its minuteness, and was busied

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with speculations which gave an additional and still more solemn splendour to the mysterious loveliness of the world.

It was in the summer of this year that Bysshe fell desperately in love with his cousin, Harriet Grove, who, with her brother, was on a visit to Field Place. Elizabeth Shelley, who was then at home, always made one of the party in their moonlight strolls through the groves of Strood and the beautiful scenery of St. Leonard's; at which time the young lover had just reason to suppose that his attachment had met with sympathy. The whole party, with Bysshe's mother, went from Sussex to Mr. Grove's house in London; and the presence of the parents, inasmuch as it appeared to sanction the daily intercourse between the young couple, carried to Bysshe's mind a well-grounded expectation that his ardent affections and wandering sympathies had found at last a resting-place and a home. It was not, however, so to be. In the letters which passed between them after Miss Harriet Grove had returned to Wiltshire, the speculative doubts which were expressed on serious subjects alarmed the parents of the young lady for the future welfare of their daughter; and, on Shelley being expelled from Oxford, all intimacy was broken off, and Miss Grove soon made another choice. The blow fell on Bysshe with cruel force.

Shelley went to Oxford in 1810, in which year he became an undergraduate of University College. His secluded habits, and the ardour with which he threw all the energies of his mind into the acquisition of know

ledge, were gratified by the customs and opportunities which he found when entering on this new mode of life. The forms of study at Oxford, then as now, were well adapted to exercise a beneficial influence on a mind somewhat prone, at the time, to mysticism, and to the neglect of practical results; and it must therefore be for ever regretted that Shelley's academical career terminated so early.

Nothwithstanding the extremely spiritual and romantic character of his genius, he applied himself to logic with ardour and success, and of course brought it to bear on all subjects, including theology. With his habitual disregard of consequences, he hastily wrote a pamphlet, in which the defective logic of the usual arguments in favour of the existence of a God was set forth: this he circulated among the authorities and members of his college. In point of fact, the pamphlet did not contain any positive assertion; it was merely a challenge to discussion, beginning with certain axioms, and finishing with a Q. E. D. The publication (consisting of only two pages) seemed rather to imply, on the part of the writer, a desire to obtain better reasoning on the side of the commonly received opinion, than any wish to overthrow with sudden violence the grounds of men's belief. In any case, however, had the heads of the college been men of candid and broad intellects, they would have recognised in the author of the obnoxious pamphlet an earnest love of truth, a noble passion for arriving at the nature of things, however painful the road. They might at least have sought, by argument and remonstrance, to set him

in what they conceived to be the right path; but either they had not the courage and the regard for truth necessary for such a course, or they were themselves the victims of a narrow education. At any rate, for this exercise of scholastic ingenuity, Shelley was expelled. A college friend of the poet (Mr. Hogg) shared the same fate, for supporting his cause.

Mr. Hogg was the son of a gentleman in the north of England, whose acquaintance Shelley had made on his first arrival at Oxford, by sitting accidentally next to him at the hall dinner. To reason on any subject, at any time, with any one, was to Shelley an irresistible temptation. Discussion, and the clash of argument with another, by which he strove to render his own perception of any subject more clear and defined, delighted him. In Mr. Hogg he found a companion acute enough to be a worthy antagonist, and one who was always ready to place himself at his disposal for the combat of words. The two friends were inseparable. The bonds of sympathy between them were their literary tastes and their intellectual activity; and accordingly they walked, dined, and supped together, always discussing.

On Shelley receiving the sentence of expulsion, which was ready drawn up in due form, under the seal of the college, as if the act had been resolved on previously, he immediately withdrew, and ran, in a state of painful agitation, to Mr. Hogg's rooms. His friend, with a generosity not uncommon in youth, though too seldom retained in later life, speedily wrote a letter, remonstrating with the authorities for their act. He was at

once sent for, and, after similar angry and ill-mannered questioning to that which had been pursued in Shelley's case, was sentenced to the same honourable expulsion already pronounced against his companion.

This unhappy event took place on Lady Day, 1811. The friends quitted Oxford next morning for London.

So far as I can gather from some scanty records, I am inclined to think that, at this time, Shelley's father would have been satisfied with some very slight concessions on his son's part-in fact, with his promising a merely formal compliance with the ceremonies observed in most households. But, had he asked his native stream, the Arun, to run up to its source, he would have had as great a chance of obtaining his desire. Exasperated by his son's refusal to conform to the orthodox belief, he forbade him to appear at Field Place. On the sensitively affectionate feelings of the young controversialist and poet, this sentence of exclusion from his boyhood's home inflicted a bitter pang; yet he was determined to bear it, for the sake of what he believed to be right and true.

Conscious of high intellectual power, and of unsullied moral purity, he had been persecuted at Eton for the resistance he always offered to despotism. From Oxford he had been expelled, with great injustice, for a pamphlet which, if it had been given as a translation of the work of some old Greek, would have been regarded as a model of subtle metaphysical reasoning. He was excluded from his father's house for acting in accordance with the dictates of his conscience; and he